Test Pattern (32 page)

“What’s that thing she’s doing with her arms?” he asks. “She looks like a gorilla.”

It looked neat when I saw those kids do it on that teenage dance show on the test pattern. But I don’t say that. I say, “I hope nobody is watching this.”

“Everybody is watching this,” he moans. He plunks down on the couch. Mom’s doing the backward-forward step now, holding her top hat above her head and grinning like Charlie McCarthy. Dad’s face is scrunched up like he’s getting a shot but he can’t stop watching. “Where the hell did she get
that
from?”

“From me,” I blurt out of guilt.

“You?” He tears his eyes away from Mom and glares at me.

“Yeah. I saw it on … on TV.” I feel rotten. “It looked a lot better when this guy did it. He—”

“Oh, God,” he interrupts as Mom’s face fills the screen in close-up, so close that all you see is her big wink and that stupid grin that shows all her teeth. She’s going into her finale. The camera moves back. She’s winking, she’s grinning, she’s flying across the stage. And then—oh no, please please please, don’t let anyone I know be watching—she flings herself into a split.

"I don’t believe it,” Dad says. He looks as sick as I feel. “Those morons are actually applauding for her."

I watch Mom throw kisses to the morons. And then I ask Dad, “Does this mean Mom is famous?”

EVERY NOW AND then I get a postcard from Mom. After she won third prize on
Talent Scouts,
she tried out for the June Taylor dancers but didn’t make it. She says she’s working up some new routines and she’s practicing all the time, which I guess that Wally guy got tired of because she says she’s not with him anymore.

Last time I got a postcard it was from Hollywood, California, a picture of Graumann’s Chinese Theater. Mom wrote that Hollywood was her destiny, her talent was meant for the big screen, not TV. That’s what Raoul, her new friend who’s going to be a movie star, told her. She met him at the restaurant where they both work, and she said that on their breaks they rehearse in the alley outside the kitchen. She says she’s ready to find an agent.

Dad’s gone back to work at the shipyard. He works in an office now. He says it’s a better job, that he got a promotion and maybe next year he’ll get a raise. He had a talk with his boss and theyagreed that he shouldn’t work outside anymore, that he’s better suited to keep track of inside stuff, like who’s working where and things like that. If I call him at work, he answers the phone, “Personnel.” He sounds very important. He even wears a real hat to work.

I think he sees Delia there. When we have dinner at her house, they talk about the same people. They go out, too. The other night they went to the Moose Ballroom to dance to the Rhythmairs. I have a feeling they smooched a little because Dad’s face was the color of Delia’s lipstick when he got home. It’s weird to think they might do that because I still think of Mom as my mom, but then I think if she weren’t, who would I want? I can’t have Mrs. Finkelstein because she’s already Molly’s mother, but Delia wouldn’t be so bad. She’s funny, she makes me laugh, and the best part is she makes Dad laugh, too. So I guess it doesn’t matter if they do a little smooching as long as they don’t do sex.

Sixth grade’s okay, especially now that I’ve got a training bra, 28AAA. Delia and I went shopping for it at Nachman’s. She sat on the little bench in the dressing room while I tried on the bras and she didn’t even say, like Mom would have, “You don’t need a bra, there’s nothing there.” Instead, she picked out one with a little lace on it and said I looked va-va-voom.

Molly’s mom got back from the writers'-colony place, and now she’s working on a book, all the time writing, writing. She reads me parts while Molly and I sit at their kitchen table eating the apple strudel Mr. Finkelstein likes to bake. I don’t understand what she’s written, but I like to listen to her words, how they go up and down and around like butterflies in your head.

Mr. Finkelstein tells stories and jokes, and talks to me about all kinds of stuff. He says there are things in the world we may never understand, that there is mystery and magic in the universe. He says it’s good to wonder about things because wondering is the first step to discovery. And he’s helped me understand that Mom and Dad’s problems really weren’t my fault, and whatever happens now will be okay because I can make it be okay.

He asks me what I think about all kinds of things, but he never asks about the test pattern anymore.

I haven’t watched it since that time I saw the scary news on the test pattern about Mom and Dad and the gun. But tonight’s one of those nights when I can’t sleep. I’m staring at the ceiling wondering about stuff, not just about Mom, but things like If I could get a pet, would I get a chicken or a monkey, or If your toenails really grow after you die, do they put bigger shoes on you for your funeral?

And then I start to wonder what I’d see if I turned on the test pattern just one more time.

It’s a creepy thought, but it’s keeping me up. So, like I used to do, I tiptoe down the stairs and turn on the TV. There it is: giant’s eye, bull’s-eye, round and square at the same time. I hear its hum and wait for the tingling feeling to start pricking at my toes and fingers.

I wait and wait. But nothing happens. No tingling, no spinning, no melting into a picture. Nothing is there but the test pattern.

I feel suddenly free, like something dark and furry just left my head. I turn off the test pattern and open the front door. Out on the porch, the wind washes me clean and fresh and pure as Ivory Snow. Across the bay I see Norfolk, a zipper of light between the water and the sky.

And I make a wish upon it as if it were a star.

I am grateful to many people for their help and support:

Lynne Barrett and John DuFresne, for their inspiration and guidance.

Aaron Priest, my agent and champion, for his belief in me.

Betty Kelly, my editor, for her enthusiasm and wisdom.

Frances Jalet-Miller, for her editorial insight.

Lucy Childs, for her perception.

Also, Norma Watkins and Meri-Jane Rochelson, for their reading of the early drafts and their encouragement.

Melissa Simpson, library manager of the Newport News
Daily Press.

Barry Massin, the Wizard of Welding.

Maddy Blais, for her good counsel.

And of course, to Donny, Allison, and Ken.

“Smart … inventive.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Inventive new meaning to the phrase ‘must-see TV.’”

—Glamour

“A fable worthy of
The Twilight Zone.
”

—People

“Klein’s book is more magical realism than science fiction. She expertly conjures the bittersweet story of a blue-collar family in distress, of lost dreams and a young girl’s coming-of-age.
Test Pattern
is a marvelous, clever, funny, and sad novel.”

—Booklist

“This surreal mid-century tale of a mom who feels like ‘Lucy gone bad’ and the family left in her wake entertains as surely as a parallel-universe episode of
Ozzie and Harriet.
”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Many novels reflect the pernicious influence of television on American society, but few openly acknowledge it. Marjorie Klein’s affecting debut,
Test Pattern
, goes a step further, using television’s harmful effects as her theme…. Klein’s more serious achievement, though, is in eliciting true pathos from [the] doomed parents and their ingenuously spiritual daughter, all of whom are painfully betrayed by the teasing promises of television fantasies.”

—Baltimore Sun

“Zingy and fun, the novel’s first half feels so familiar, like
Nick at Nite
reruns…. In the book’s second half, [Klein] breaks through the screen with a highly original conclusion. Humor turns to near tragedy. An undercurrent of disappointment and pain gives depth to the characters, and they surprise us. Klein creates a complex connection between cultural history and individual experience. Ultimately,
Test Pattern
poses serious questions about how television gives people both the strength to persist and the power to change.”

—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“At times, Test Pattern is a light and nostalgic reminder of an earlier era, like a sweet and silly episode of
I Love Lucy.
You’ll nod and chuckle in recognition. And just below the surface in Miami, writer Marjorie Klein’s imaginative debut novel is also a darker reality: a 1950s family at the brink of ruin.
Test Pattern
proves Klein’s promise as a novelist and showcases her considerable talent…. Her descriptions are deliciously detailed; her dialogue is energetic and credible.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Quirky and fresh, Marjorie Klein is the most original new voice since Kurt Vonnegut. She tells it like it really was in the so-called
Happy Days
of the 1950s—and gives us a window into the flip side of
Ozzie and Harriet.”

—
IRIS RAINER DART
, author of
When I Fall in Love
and
Beaches

“What’s most striking is the author’s voice, which ranges from fresh to knowing, uproarious to poignant, sometimes within a single breathtaking sentence. With her hit-and-run prophecies, eleven-year-old Cassandra Palmer is both the kid next door and a force to reckon with. Ditch your clicker and tune in;
Test Pattern
is one channel you won’t want to change.”

—
MADELEINE BLAIS
, author of
In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle
and
J
ohn
K
atzenbach,
author of
Hart’s War

“Marjorie Klein looks at the same world as we all do, but she sees something completely different. Something strange and wonderful. Sit back, strap on your seat belt, grab hold of this book with both hands— you’re about to take the wildest ride in the amusement park. Marjorie Klein is a brave new voice in American fiction and
Test Pattern
is an exhilarating blast, a stunning debut novel.”

—
J
ohn
D
ufresne,
author of
Love Warps the Mind a Little

“Marjorie Klein’s Test Pattern is a witty fable on the lure of television in its early days. With sharp, clear prose, Klein tells the compelling story of the Palmer household, where the television is less a piece of furniture than a character, with the uncanny power to reflect a daughter’s foresight and a mother’s dreams.”

—RENE STEINKE, author of The Fires

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2000 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

TEST PATTERN.
Copyright © 2000 by Marjorie Klein.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03122-8

First Perennial edition published 2001.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Klein, Marjorie. Test pattern / Marjorie Klein. — 1st. ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-688-17284-9 I. Title.

PS3561.L3486T47   2000

813’.54—dc21         99-16423

                           CIP

ISBN 0-06-095953-3 (pbk.)

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